Work

Shining island : for strings

Score Sample

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It is listed in our catalogue because an event featuring a performance of this work was included in our
calendar of Australian music. Details of this
performance are listed below.

Work Overview

I was greatly saddened when I learned that Henryck Górecki had
died last November. He and I became good friends in 1994, at the
Vale of Glamorgan Festival in Wales. I dearly treasured our
friendship. I so much wish that I'd been able to stay with him in
his beloved Tatra mountains in southern Poland.

Henryck was always full of bonhomie. Underlying it, however, was
a brooding melancholy. This, of course, informs his
profoundly-affecting music. As I came to know him better, he'd
sometimes mutter 'After bad there is worse.' I'd say, 'Come on,
Henryck: after bad there's better.' 'No,' he'd reply, 'after bad
there is always worse.' One day, he ventured 'Perhaps for you,
coming from that big shining island, in the south, after bad
there is better. For me, for many of us here, after bad there is
only worse.'

Shining Island is concerned with the emotions contained
in the above conversation. In its slowly-moving first part, the
downward-turning phrases represent Henryck's voice and the
upward-turning phrases mine. Henryck's voice is more impassioned
in the second part, which begins with the distant sound of music
from the shining island. It was inspired by an Indigenous
children's song from Australia's north. Towards the end of the
work this music and Henryk's voice become as one. This final
section is underpinned by a low 'C' pedal, which I always use to
signify god, the god of all beliefs.